1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to apparatus for and method of producing instruction maps for effecting delivery of customer orders from a store or place where customer's orders are received.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the past delivery of goods to customers, especially foods such as pizza, from a store or location where pizza is prepared has followed the plan of employing delivery personnel who are familiar with the territory served by a store or similar location. Such a person is counted upon to deliver a customer's order as rapidly as possible and in an acceptable condition. There are many problems in such a delivery system, such as late deliveries, need to train delivery people for service areas, allowing the delivery people to seek addresses, and the inability to give accurate instructions on preferred delivery routes between the store and the address of one or more customers living in a common area or adjoining streets. The past method has caused the store to choose a geographical place that has the potential to serve customers who are counted upon to place repeat orders by telephone for delivery on a rapid time schedule. Therefore, the geography of chosen areas is an important consideration to the success of the business of stores, as well as where stores may be located to serve customers rapidly.
When considering store location due consideration must be given to area maps where customers and potential customers are located. It is known that U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,513 has disclosed an automated map display system for electronically storing, accessing, and displaying video images generated from physical maps having field of view data representing a geographic coverage in longitude and latitude as a displayed image which is derived after the map image is generated. The object of the system of the aforesaid patent is to be able to store map images on an optical disk and selectively access and display portions of maps having various fields of view, and different map scales.